


Getaway

by abeillle



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Gen, Implied Viktor/Yuuri Katsuki, Post Episode 3, unhealthy family dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-10
Updated: 2018-03-10
Packaged: 2019-03-29 11:51:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13926585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abeillle/pseuds/abeillle
Summary: Viktor breaks his promise. Yuri takes a vacation.





	Getaway

**Author's Note:**

> "This is the part where I'm a marathon runner  
> And both my ankles are sprained"  
> (Sorority Noise, A Better Sun)

Yuri Plisetsky stands in line at the airport, trying without success to be excited about going home. Where, oh where is the enthusiasm of yesteryear? Or at least of last week. He'd been running on adrenaline, and now the banalities of his life seem stifling. Yuri feels aimless. All the fight's leached out of him and left him blank -- having your ass kicked by the world's saddest nerd does that you. But he doesn't want to go back to Russia just yet. If he goes home now, the trip will have been a dismal failure. He doesn’t want to be another casualty to prop up Viktor’s ego; he hates playing the victim. If he returns to Yakov without Viktor in tow and with no title, he’ll be the object of everybody’s pity and the laughingstock of the decade. No, he’s determined to enjoy himself. He imagines himself telling Yakov and the guys: “Viktor who? He didn’t even perform at the Ice Castle, he got some dweeby late bloomer almost twice my age to do it for him. Yeah, he’s not that cool up close. Japan was great, though.” It’s a good plan. He’ll go to a big city, someplace touristy, and spend the remainder of his money on street food and a few nights’ lodgings at a hotel. See the sights. Then he'll fly home and forget Viktor ever happened to him.  
When it's his turn, he asks the attendant for a ticket to the most popular city in Japan. Half an hour later he's boarding a Tokyo-bound plane with a sense of newfound determination and a pamphlet for the onsen burning a hole in his pocket. He can make it. This is nothing. He peers out the window and watches everything coalesce into specks of light below him.

  
When Yuri lands in Tokyo it’s past midnight. He stops at the first cafe he sees and orders a large coffee with cream and sugar. He drinks it slowly while leafing through a pamphlet on tourist attractions in Tokyo. None of them seem too appealing. Yuri can imagine them, crowded with chattering families and students taking camera photos. He decides to explore the city on his own instead.  
Tucked in the back of the pamphlet is a card about youth resources. Drugs, homelessness, abusive parents. Yuri remembers the flight attendant who had given him the pamphlet; the look of pity in her eyes. He crumples up the paper. He does not like well-meaning adults. Viktor was a well-meaning adult, once. Yuri stares into his drink and fumes. He started drinking coffee when he was thirteen, after watching Viktor take tiny, elegant sips from a polystyrene cup during an interview. It made him seem mature. Yuri, who was in the business of persuading Yakov to let him do quads, thought that acting grown-up would help.  
Yuri leaves the coffee and the pamphlet on the table and walks out. This is supposed to be his vacation from Viktor. He heard once that it takes a month to shed a habit, but Yuri aims to rid himself of Viktor in a few days. He’s sure he can manage it. He’s more capable than most kids in his age bracket: the majority of fifteen year-olds he knows do not have it in them to be breadwinners, or to pursue people across hundreds of miles.

  
Escaping Viktor turns out to be impossible. Yuri sees him in navy peacoat worn by a passerby and in the face of a restaurant mascot, happily slurping noodles. Yuuri, too, is a sore spot, but since there is a litany of twentysomethings with black hair, glasses, and tan jackets in Tokyo, Yuri stops expecting a confrontation after a few hours. Viktor, though. Viktor is a nagging itch that Yuri pointedly refuses to scratch.  
To distract himself, he walks through the neon haze of what he assumes is a shopping district. A lot of the clothes are bright and daring -- not his style, but he can respect it. He spots a vivid green ushanka in the display of a winter apparel store, and considers buying it for his grandfather on the basis that it would make him smile. His grandfather has a penchant for the unexpected. He’s like Viktor that way.  
Remembering his grandfather is enough of a punch in the gut to make Yuri stop in the middle of the sidewalk. When he traced Viktor he’d practically sprinted to the airport, only remembering to leave a message after his baggage was loaded. He’d dialled the senior’s home and recited a quick explanation and apology to the voicemail, too giddy with nervous energy to feel ashamed. He feels ashamed now. He digs around his backpack for his cell phone, but he has no reception and the battery’s a few minutes from dying anyway.  
Not knowing what to do with himself, Yuri sets off again, this time towards a less commercial area. Remembering his grandfather and Viktor has, irritatingly, made him remember Viktor’s family. He only ever saw them at a distance, at the Junior World Championships; two tall, silver-haired adults donning scarves and fancy jackets. Viktor’s mother was applying lipstick. His father, a businessman type, was conspicuously checking his watch every few minutes. Neither of them looked pleased to be accompanying their genius, gold medallist son.  
“-- you know how -- rumours --,” Yuri could hear his father saying from afar. “Yes -- we know -- not only about -- we know you’re not doping, it’s just -- and, well -- there’s the whole thing about -- you know, Viktor -- boys -- people will talk --”  
He had seen Viktor’s posture change, seen him narrow his eyes defiantly, but it was all wrong. There was no sense of charm or drama to it. He was hurt, which made Yuri want to knock something over. Viktor was his hero. He wanted to pretend Viktor was untouchable. He watched as Viktor stared ahead with calm defiance and said, “What if I am?”  
His mother carefully screwed the tube of lipstick shut and closed the cap with an audible click.  
“--discuss this later,” she said. He watched them make snake their way through a row of empty seats; all three of them perfectly graceful. He had taken Viktor’s gutsy what-if-I-am as conclusive proof that he was, in fact, exactly the man Yuri admired, but he’s not so sure in retrospect. He also remembers not having the faintest clue what his father had been getting at, either, but he has a few ideas now, and most of them could probably be proven with a game of truth or dare with Yuuri Katsuki.  
He keeps walking. He’s forgotten his promise to get over Viktor’s betrayal and he’s past caring. At one point he sees a tall young man with silvery blonde hair, and his heart nearly bursts in his chest. He turns around and reveals himself to be a high schooler bouncing a volleyball in his hands: definitely not Viktor. The encounter leaves Yuri anxious anyway. He stumbles around, tired and irritable, until he comes across a bench in an alleyway. He loops his backpack straps across his arms and curls his knees into his chest. He falls asleep around daybreak, and when he wakes up it’s midday and snowing.

Somebody’s left a bottle of water and coins by the foot of the bench. Well-meaning adults. They’re impossible to escape.


End file.
